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Seven years to build his “SmartTrack” surface rail line. Seventeen to build the downtown relief line subway Olivia Chow prefers.

Tory pronounces that comparison at every opportunity: on his website, in his speeches, in his pamphlets, over and over again at Tuesday’s debate. It’s effective partly because its specificity suggests expertise. Surely those non-round numbers must have come from some transit authority, right?

Nope.

It’s relatively well-understood that the “seven years” part of the slogan is Tory’s own disputed estimate for SmartTrack. Far less understood: “17 years” is also arbitrary. No expert has actually said that the downtown relief line will take 17 years to build.

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The provincial transit agency, Metrolinx, has never issued a real estimate. The TTC hasn’t either. And the city’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, says the relief line — the first part of it, to be precise — can actually be completed in “between 12 and 15 years.”

“In our opinion, 15 years is the high end,” Keesmaat said in an interview on Monday.

So who, exactly, is the source for Tory’s “17 years”?

Olivia Chow.

In summary: Tory has based four months of misleading transit sloganeering on a number Chow mistakenly used in an interview on a campus radio station six months ago.

Tory was an advocate of the relief line until May; early in the campaign, Chow sounded less enthused than he did. In April, speaking to the Star’s Edward Keenan on CIUT FM, she said the relief line can’t be finished until 2031.

“According to the TTC’s report from a year and a half ago, the fastest we can build there, according to the TTC, is 2031, right,” she said. “So we’re talking about 17 years.”

Tory immediately pounced, saying he would build the relief line faster than her. When he reversed himself in May and
introduced SmartTrack instead
, he also introduced the snappy 7-versus-17 phrasing.

Here’s the problem: the TTC report did not actually say the relief line would take 17 years. Chow had her facts wrong.

The
TTC study
assessed possible ways to address the city’s expected downtown transit needs in 2031, and it discussed the relief line at length. But there was no direct connection between the relief line and the year 2031: 2031 was chosen for the study simply because it is 20 years away from 2011, the year the TTC chose as the base for its calculations, said spokesman Brad Ross.

The year 2031 also figures prominently in reports from Metrolinx. But that’s because 2031 is 25 years from 2006, the base year for Metrolinx’s
25-year Big Move project plan
, said spokeswoman Anne Marie Akins.

Tory’s campaign acknowledged Tuesday that it got the “17 years” from the Chow interview. It also suggested all of this is her fault.

“Ms Chow had said throughout this campaign she relies on the experts. In April she said clearly her relief line will take 17 years to build. We took her at her word when she said 17 years,” Tory spokeswoman Amanda Galbraith said in an email.

Chow’s spokesman, Jamey Heath, defended her reference to 2031. That year, he said, is repeatedly cited in TTC and Metrolinx reports as a date at which Union Station will be at capacity. He also attacked Tory for making things up.

“She also said she hoped it will be built faster,” Heath said, “and the chief planner says that we’re looking at a 12-to 15-year range. And if Mr. Tory had consulted transit experts instead of napkin-makers before making his plan, then his numbers would not literally be pulled out of thin air.”

It doesn’t appear Tory will be abandoning the erroneous but fruitful slogan any time soon. After conceding that Chow was the source of “17 years,” Galbraith concluded her response by, yes, repeating “17 years.”

“People can’t afford to wait 17 years,” she said. “They need real transit relief sooner, which is why we will build a 22-station SmartTrack line in seven years.”

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